I was raised in an ultra-conservative environment; as a child of immigrants wanting to protect their children in an incredibly unfamiliar foreign country, I grew up with religion weaved through every facet of my childhood. While I’m grateful to have had such a deep connection to my heritage fostered in me, my upbringing meant that my only exposure to Western music came in the form of noughties music videos playing on bowling alley screens on primary school excursions, and failed X-Factor audition compilations I would watch with my high-school best friend between classes. I only began listening to mainstream music in year 10, and discovered a world that I could run away to, where beautiful, self-assured people lived out stories that I wasn’t able to have.

For a very long time, I had no idea how to exist at the intersection of queerness and being a person of colour. I became infatuated with the theatrics and space-filling nature of pop hits – they made me feel like, for the three-and-a-half minutes of this pop track, I could take up space.

A solo trip to Berlin kickstarted my journey of self-discovery in relation to my queerness and self-conviction: a journey I continued in grimey club bunkers and sticky-floored parties in Melbourne. Writing music became an outlet for my self-expression and an escape from hyper-restrictive social norms. Meanwhile, wall-shaking acid-techno and exhilarating pop soundtracked my first and second heartbreaks – the naïve, yet all-consuming, world-shattering kind.

Written on 4am train rides home, ‘REALITY TV’ was produced by my incredibly talented friend Rino Darusman. The first single from a forthcoming debut mixtape, the electro-pop track frames a dysfunctional situationship in the melodrama and over-the-top sensationality of the trashy reality television I binged during Melbourne’s 2020 lockdown (cc: Keeping Up With The Kardashians).

Following a move to Sydney, and as the city’s lockdown this year was announced, I was forced to throw out all plans to have the ‘REALITY TV’ music video professionally produced. While coming to terms with the loss of two members of my family, and unable to travel home to my parents in Melbourne, I built the video’s set myself in my garage, and styled, filmed and edited it solo, fuelled by plenty of tears and caffeine. Visually inspired by, and paying tribute to, the early-2000s music videos that introduced me to music as I know it now, seeing this project through has been one of my proudest achievements – a full-circle experience that I hope lost and confused baby-Kavi would be proud of too.

I’m glad I’ve finally found a world for him to belong to. ‘REALITY TV’ is the first taster of a world I’m building for all the queer, coloured kids who don’t know how to exist. KLUBKAVI is where I get to exist on my own terms. It sounds like the liberation and energy of the dancefloor, paired with the fun, carefree euphoria of pop music.

KLUBKAVI is my world, and you’re all just living in it <3.